i listen and give shape to what i hear

The way I move through a day still feels strange. Three months of them have been filled with the cloudy murk of things I can’t put into neat 8-hour chunks of time I used to spend in the box of a cubicle. Where my office supplies were tucked into rectangle drawers and word documents dragged and disappeared into tan-colored folder icons on the square screen in front of me. When I friend asks, how was your week? I pause and wonder if I am being asked to recount the things I did in it, if that is the measure of how my week was, because there is no such list and even if there were, it would surely come up shorter than my waking hours.

There is the work of sustaining a life in transition, which isn’t given the job title it deserves. One potential employer asked what I did during the two months between leaving my old job and arriving in Nairobi, and the most true answer I could have given her was move my life to a different continent. Even that isn’t the best answer, because there was also the work of preserving my life here for when I returned. I think now of all those films depicting Victorian-era England and the furniture that was covered in white cloths, the silverware and china locked up, the fields laid to rest. It takes time to arrange a life that will welcome you back.

And now, the coming back. The hours I sleep, willing my body to catch up with my heart that has been racing from the thrill of it all. (Just yesterday, a nurse-friend told me that for infants, breast-feeding is as taxing on the heart as running a marathon. No wonder they sleep so much, and so deeply.) The excavating of memories and words that went underground in the aftershocks of returning, this in conversations with friends whose patience goes deep, and whose eyes are trained to spot the glimmering of gold underneath all that dirt and rubble. The steps forward, by which I mean resumes and interviews and thank you notes and wondering and discerning, along with the careful threading of the old with the new. When it is finished, I want it to speak a story of love and faithfulness, and I want it to be beautiful. 

If life before was a race, as many people describe what we Americans do, living now is more like a dance. There is no beginning or end, only moving from one position to another. Some are drawn out more slowly, others repeated over and over, all of them coordinated to some beautiful song that plays from somewhere. I listen and give shape to what I hear.

***

(photo: petals carried by water)

literary, lately: travel edition

I have a love/hate relationship with professional conferences. Love: travel to new places, eating out on someone else's dime, staying in hotels (I love a clean bathroom, especially when I'm not the one cleaning it). Hate: spending all day in over-chilled rooms with no windows, uninspiring keynote speakers, networking (i.e. an introvert's hell).

I'm thinking about this because it's happening next week, I'm going to a new city, getting up in front of a lot of people to talk about writing (simultaneously my most exhilarating dream and worst nightmare), and hopefully getting lots of reading done on the flights there and back -- among other things. Here are a few links that are getting me excited about traveling, writing, reading and everything in between.

Listen to what makes your hair stand on end, your heart melt, and your eyes go wide, what stops you in your tracks and makes you want to live, wherever it comes from, and hope that your writing can do all those things for other people. A writing manifesto, in the form of ten tips. Maybe I'll scrap my presentation and just read this to the audience?

Airports are mini-civilizations, governed by their own rules and rituals. On bookstores in airports. My airport rules: a magazine from those ubiquitous bookstores, peanut m&m's and stretchy pants.

The National Book Award long list selections are being announced this week. I haven't even heard of most of the nonfiction books just announced. Looks like I have some reading to do. Maybe worth an airport book purchase?  Follow along if you're interested...

I go in phases with writing music. Right now, it's this song and every other one from the album. He's, like, the male T.S. I'll probably also be listening to this on my flights. (Don't judge.)

Can't wait to find myself here. (Quick stop over to see my sister!)

***
(photo: NYC skyline, before flight to Kenya)

in the shadows of evening

My empty apartment stays quiet until I come home. When I arrive, it speaks in hushed tones of lit candles, running water, whirring ceiling fans, as if speaking quietly of something shameful. When I change out of my work clothes, the late afternoon light is already fading across my bedspread, leaving the rest of the room in shadows.

*            *            * 

There is a potted cactus that sits on the windowsill in my kitchen. In the quiet daytime hours, when I am at work or running weekend errands or trying to make my life exciting and full, the sun shines on the cactus, marking time by the shadows it creates. I water the plant occasionally, when I remember. Mostly, the cactus feeds on sun and time. Its growth is slow, nearly hidden. Some plants sprout over night. Flowers practically bud before your eyes. Bamboo shoots up so fast its reach upwards is audible, a pained and hope-filled creaking. Just the other day, after more than twelve months on my sill, I noticed that this cactus has a few new buds. It is stretching itself. I am proud of my silent cactus, the way it's stayed and grown despite so little attention from me.

*            *            *

When I arrive home, my heart rumbles and stirs in my chest. I carry around small stories that made up my day (the funny thing he did, that meeting that went well, that bold idea I shared, the way they took me seriously this time). Too little, it seems, to warrant a call to a friend, but too big to keep all to myself. Who will see in all these stories that small shoot in me that sprouted, that wasn't there just last week? Who will sit with me in the shadows of evening, candles lit against the dark, their whispers only of hope, of the thing that comes after night?

these posts are my scraps

A week or two ago I finished a heartbreaker of a book. Those are always the hardest to follow, so I waited on what I should read next. Some kind of presence nudged me to a book I've had on my shelf for a few years, one I bought at a used bookstore because I'd heard good things about it, and there it was, gently loved and only $7. It's called The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers. I'd been thinking about this book a lot over the past few months, but it's one about writing and I try to be careful about these books because they can lead to procrastination without a whole lot learned.

But this book is renewing my confidence in books about writing. Every chapter is exactly what I need to hear to the very hour. Last week, for example, I had been revising an essay in which my former housemates are mentioned. As a courtesy, I'd been planning to send them the essay to read before I submitted it, but as I got closer to finishing it, I became more and more anxious about having them read it. I made a few last changes and sent it off, hoping I'd explained myself well enough in my emails to them. Then I drove home from the coffee shop where I'd been working and finished reading the chapter called The Wicked Child, which is really about the risks of writing about your tribe, your community, your family. This essay wasn't about them per se, but it involved my time living with them, which makes it about us. The author had a bunch of helpful admonitions for me, many of which I'm still chewing on. This one sticks out:

I can't think of a risker business than writing. Not only because so few succeed in conventional terms, with publication and some payment, but because it almost certainly requires banishment. First, there is the literal act of removing oneself, of choosing solitude. Then there is the psychological separation, holding oneself apart. And finally, the potential rejection of friends and family, critics and publishers... But you cannot censor yourself; successful writing never comes about through half-measures.

More on that another time - maybe. What I really wanted to write about is what she starts with, which is answering the question about why one should write. She calls the chapter The Ambivalent Writer. She's an editor, so she knows how many of us are just that. Most of her advice is reminiscent of Rilke (a la "must I write?') but in modern and straightforward terms, and taking it a step further to encourage us to unearth not just an obsession to write but what our obsessions compel us to write. Finding form and subject is like finding a mate, she writes. "You really have to search, and you can't compromise -- unless you can compromise, in which case your misery will be of a different variety." She writes about honoring the forms and subjects that invade our dreams and diaries, of mining the scraps of what we write, and of listening to the voices that keep calling to be written.

As you might gather from my erratic posting, I struggle with knowing what to write about. That's part of the reason my job works well for me -- they tell me what to write about, and usually I'm able to do it with some enthusiasm. Though let me tell you that they day they took me off Urology as one of my designated programs, I was a happy woman. Even that tells me something -- I enjoy writing about my organization's efforts to address spiritual or emotional challenges and support patients beyond the bedside, or studies about how cancer affects large populations of people, or the disease's impact on women. Sorry men, my writing heart is not beating for your prostates, not now anyway.

But something I'm hopeful about is that some of the most random or messy posts here could still be useful because they can point to write I notice and what calls to me. They tell me what I care or notice enough to write about. They are my scraps that I can mine.

picking up the pace in the second half

I had been running for a few years before I paid any attention to things like "progressive runs" or "negative splits." These training objectives are based on the idea that finishing faster than you started improves your fitness. So with each mile, you run a little faster. Sometimes the goal can be even simpler: just run the second half of your route faster than the first half.

I don't do these kinds of runs often, because, like I've said before, I'm stronger at starting than finishing. This is true in running, and it's true in a lot of other areas of my life. I start fast and strong but then lose energy and focus, and poop out.

BUT! I am on a quest to change this, in running and in life. Today marks the halfway point of 2014. The first half of my year has been pretty good. There are a few areas of life that I'm trying to focus on, and in a few there has been noticeable movement forward (including in writing!). So I'm not really trying to make up for things I've ignored during these first six months. I just want to finish strong, with my purpose in mind.

When I do the "second half faster than the first half" style of progressive run, I usually plan an out-and-back route. So I'm imagining myself doing the little turn around and picking up the pace. It might hurt a little during this second half, but the pain is what tells me something is happening.

Happy half of 2014!

amy, who did things slowly

A few years ago I had this officemate named Amy. Amy was a short woman with a small frame, a kind smile and blond hair. But you could be fooled by that exterior because she had some heft to her. She communicated with insistence, like she knew what she needed and wouldn't back down until she got it.

Amy was also slow. I was always out of the office by 5, but she often stayed later, and I wondered what took her so long to finish up. After working with her for a while, I realized it was because she was meticulous and methodical. I had considered myself pretty good at details, but I was also fast. I like to tackle a job and get it done, so of course I missed things sometimes. For me, Amy gave "attention to detail" a whole new meaning. Amy and I hired student workers together, and even in that process, I missed things that Amy caught - a seemingly insignficant comment made during an interview, or a small detail on the application that signaled to Amy that this person did or didn't fit.

Though Amy was slower, when I compared our work, hers was often better. There were fewer mistakes, and she had a confidence and deep knowledge of what she'd just completed that I often lacked in my hurried-ness. Having the patience to do a task slowly was one of the biggest lessons I learned in that job.

The thing is, there are a lot of things in life that require patience. Being slow, waiting, giving full attention, making sure your bases are covered are important ways to go about things. I've started a list of every day activities that would be better accomplished with a bit of patience:

1. caramelizing onions
2. painting nails
3. reading poetry
4. staining adirondack chairs
5. assembling ikea furiture
6. washing dishes 
7. ironing
8. writing
9. closing up my apartment before I leave in the morning
10. choosing what I'll wear for the day
11. listening to God
12. giving friends advice

Feel free to add to my list. I'm going to try to do things more slowly this week and see what difference it makes.

books change things

It started with a book in a bookstore. Well, I guess it probably started before that. But let's start there. In San Francisco, at my favorite bookstore where some other things started, too. I found a novel I wanted to read, then another (yes, another) Lorrie Moore book, then I saw a book by Tracy Kidder. I'd never read him before, but knew he was a popular narrative nonfiction writer. This book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, was described on the back as a story of a doctor whose work to cure TB in some of the poorest areas of the world addressed not only the body but also poverty, social justice and health policy. This stuff matters to me, I realized. I want to read more about it.

So I bought it, along with four other books on that trip. I'd also received a few others as Christmas gifts. After having moved so recently and feeling the literal weight of all my books, my purchases felt indulgent. I questioned my impulse buys. When I got home, I put them on my shelf, started reading the novel, and vowed that I'd read all the books I bought and received before any others.

A few months ago, I opened the Kidder book. I was at a coffee shop when I started it, and had trouble focusing because the people behind me were talking very loudly about the woman's new engagement ring. But I stuck with it, and a few days later found myself wishing I was with Kidder and his subject, Paul Farmer, as they hiked through Haiti to get to some patients that Farmer wanted to treat. I started thinking of my friend Shannon, a nurse who had traveled to Haiti a few years ago and, while there, felt that God was finally opening doors for her to start the nonprofit He had put on her heart nearly seven years earlier. I thought of her trips to Kenya with this new nonprofit the past two summers.

And then I thought, I want to go with her.

I'd had this thought since she first started Alabaster Mobile Clinic, but wasn't sure how I could be of help. I know how to... put on bandaids? But while reading Kidder's book, I realized I wanted to write about what Shannon does, who travels with her, and the people they meet.

So I asked her if I could come, and she said yes.

This upcoming trip to Kenya - two weeks in August - has been part of the impetus for upping my writing game. It will be a full fourteen days of observing, asking, listening, reflecting and writing - not to mention putting on bandaids (I will still get to help with minor medical care!), bumpy rides around Nairobi and seeing zebras while I pee in the jungle (apparently this will happen). I'm grateful for the focus and energy this trip will give me over the next few months. It feels like good movement forward. I'm thinking about a whole bunch of things that have been dormant for a while - about publishing and interviewing and living overseas and living with people in poverty. Things feel urgent and full.

Books change things. Can we all just agree on that?

sundays are for things like this

Sundays are good days for taking a day off and doing things that on the surface my not seem to directly improve or inspire your writing, but that you know keep those creative juices churning.

Like wandering downtown. Like laughing with a friend. Like eating ice cream.

Happy Sunday, friends.

invitation

I wish you could have been there with me.

To experience the rush of winding through the crowds of 12,000 writers carrying bags fills with books and pens and notebooks. To stop for coffee and a scone on the walk from my hotel to the Convention Center, the only real decisions ahead being which panels to choose from. To laugh with me at all the cliches - the mysterious young man in a long black peacoat who sits in a chair, opens his moleskin, and looks around to make observations about all the other attendees, or the young, hip panelist who used the word "narrative" and the qualifier "sort of" after every other word (i.e. he had a... sort of difficult time living out his narrative when he had these... sort of hallucinations...). To discuss excitedly the reading Gregory Martin did of his Stories for Boys and the book on aboriginals in Australia that Amanda Webster is writing.

When I left Seattle, I walked through the airport wheeling behind me my carry-on, heavy with books and journals I'd acquired, while my heart - eager and hungry for what is next - pulled me forward.

I wish that because now I am back and real life has gotten its hold on me and forced me to settle into its regularity and commitments. I am thinking about groceries and cleaning my toilet and when I'll make time for lunch with my friend who works down the block instead of what books I want to read next and the new ideas I have for free writing.

At the conference I wore a badge on a lanyard around my neck to enter the convention center and gain access to the panels and speakers. I hung my pass up on the mirror above my dresser when I got home, knowing I wanted to keep it but not sure why I felt a need to display it. Now it's there as a reminder that I have access. The invitation to that kind of excitement and motivation is a standing one - I'm trying to hold on to this even while I wash dishes and sit in traffic.

is it God's fault that I'm a late bloomer?

Growing up, I never ever would have thought of myself as a late bloomer. If thought of in strictly physical terms, the term wouldn't describe me at all. I was always taller than everyone else in my class, which made me look years older. I also caught on to things fairly quickly in school, and usually finished assignments early. If anything, I felt ahead of time and wanted it all to slow down.

But now I always feel a little bit behind. Moving to a big city didn't help this feeling, I'm sure, and neither does the internet. There is always someone doing something more, something better, something faster. I often feel like a very small fish in this enormous, very full pond.

Being so exposed to other peoples' journeys to supposed greatness has led me to realize that I have actually been quite slow. For example, I just read Mindy Kaling's book (please don't judge), and she writes about her absolute love for comedy in junior high  and high school - about watching Comedy Central on weekends and staying up late for SNL. She knew, she immersed herself, she went for it - and now, the same age as me, Mindy is hot stuff. I am not.

While Mindy was preparing herself for a great career in comedy, I was writing my best friend notes about the boy we both had a crush on, who we met at summer camp and making up dances to Janet Jackson songs. My life revolved around this best friend, her pool, youth group and summer camp. And this is where I start to get to the nagging question of this post: Is it God's fault that I'm a late bloomer? That it's taken me this long to even decide what I want to be when I grow up? Youth group and summer camp were places of safety and acceptance, and of growing spiritually, and I went all out for it. Some of my friends (Stanford alum) attended a summer academic institute at a college near where I went to school and asked me if I ever went to one. No, of course not, I was singing cheesy worship songs and giving girls piggy back rides to the pool and cooking pancakes over an open fire, all in the name of loving Jesus.

During my senior year of high school, I worked at a Christian bookstore. I loved browsing all the self-helpy inspirational Christian books about loving Jesus, desiring God, knowing Him. And I read many of these, too, while sitting at the register at night and waiting for customers to come. That year, in an interview for a full ride scholarship to my Christian college of choice, I was asked about the most influential books in my life. I clearly remember giving the answer: Redeeming Love and Desiring God. I didn't get the scholarship, and I still attribute it to that answer. What high school senior is reading John Piper? I realize now I would have been smart to answer some classic literature, but the truth was I wasn't reading that then. I'm just catching on to the value of that kind of fiction now. End result: I chose a different college because I didn't want my loans to keep me from doing missionary work. I was very practical (and the psychology behind some of these decisions could be analyzed further, I suppose, but that's another blog post).

I suppose it's not completely fair of me to blame God for the seeming uselessness of my adolescent activities. I could also blame my parents, media, my generation. But there's a deeper question to all of this, the flip side of placing fault. It's, "can God use it?" There's this verse in the psalms that says that God fulfills His purposes for us. It's in the context of the psalm writer feeling overwhelmed and like his life might as he's being pursued by an enemy. That's not quite my context, and yet the anxiety about my life coming to nothing is still there. I'm a good 20 years behind Mindy, and a lot of other people, at this point. I'd like to think that roasting marshmallows and playing capture the flag all summer for a few years will somehow be used of God for what He has for me today, but how that works isn't all that clear yet.

the interview: be a great audience

When people ask what kind of writing I want to do (or, excuse me, the kind of writing I do; I'm working on ownership here), I try to explain it without any of the fancy terms the writing community gives it: literary nonfiction, narrative journalism, etc. So I say I write nonfiction, and that I like telling other people's stories more than my own. I like doing research and I love interviewing. Last winter when I took a narrative journalism class, I interviewed my friend, who was my main source and character for my first story, a few weekends in a row. During the second weekend I remember having one of those "in my groove" moments where I felt like what I was doing was not work in the sense of drudgery and labor; it was challenging and satisfying and completely thrilling. That solidified it for me.

I found this cool little ditty about interviewing that frames it as a guided conversation. Totally. Part of what made those interviews with my friend so great (and fun and insightful), apart from the fact that this friend is articulate, thoughtful and totally interesting, is that we already had rapport and she had some trust in me, so we got right to the conversation part - the "center of the onion" - without needing to spend time building a relationship. But that building part is fun, too, if a little awkward at times. I like to think that interviews help "subjects" (if you can call them that) get more insight, and so benefits them, so that it's not a one-way street.

Anyway, here's what some of the link says (emphasis mine):

So, because of that, I only really interview in the strict sense of the word when I have to. I try to do everything else that I can to make sources feel comfortable enough to talk with me. That doesn’t mean that I don’t ask questions. It means I ask lots of questions. But what I mainly try to do is to be a great audience. I egg them on; I nod; I look straight into their eyes; I laugh at their jokes, whether I think they’re funny or not; I get serious when they’re serious. I kind of echo whatever emotion they seem to be sending to me. I do whatever it takes to get them talking.

recoup the joy

“I don’t actually look for inspiration. I look for ways to recoup the joy of writing when that joy is lost to me. Whenever I find myself stuck or just without any ideas, it’s because I seem to have forgotten how incredibly fun it is to mess around with words. So to remind myself, I read. But not just anything. I have to read fiction that is exuberant—not in content but style. Writers who howl on the page so loudly, you can hear them for miles. Barry Hannah and Nabokov, Flannery O’Connor and Angela Carter. Jose Saramago and Denis Johnson. Cormac McCarthy. Faulkner. Joy Williams. Annie Proulx and Nicholson Baker. Writers whose work feels alive and fresh and a little nuts, so that before long, I'll start to feel more alive, too. Alive to possibility, which is generally when I start typing.”

Fiona Maazel, on Writers Recommend

the third thing

What we did: love. We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention. Lovemaking is not a third thing but two-in-one. John Keats can be a third thing, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Dutch interiors, or Monopoly. For many couples, children are a third thing... Of course: the third thing that brought us together, and shone at the center of our lives and our house, was poetry—both our love for the art and the passion and frustration of trying to write it. 

-Donald Hall, writing of his marriage to poet Jane Kenyon in The Third Thing

the waking up is like that

The past ten weeks have been full - of writing class assignments and co-leading a ministry at church and trying to stay connected to friends and trying to keep my bedroom live-able and my clothes washed and dealing with some messy emotions and feeling like I wasn't doing anything well enough and ...

Still, I had some Big Plans for this week, the week after the crazy ten. On Saturday I went to Barnes & Noble to buy some writing books and look through some magazines. I had essays and articles to write, ones I'd been putting on the back burner and that I promised I wouldn't procrastinate on any longer. On Sunday night, I sat down to read those writing books and my eyes wouldn't stay open. I went to sleep soon after 8pm, thinking that I'd be ready to start early morning writing sessions at 5 the next morning.

And then I slept in.

And as if my body knew better than my mind, which is constantly in motion, I just kept sleeping. Sunday night, 9 hours. Monday night, 10 hours. Tuesday night, another 9. For the better part of this week I showed up at work feeling like the haze that hid the mountains was fogging up my brain, and it was all I could do to stay sitting up. I just wanted to sleep.

I've been thinking a lot about sleep and my complex relationship with it. I love it and yet resist it. I've always had difficulty taking naps because I can't seem to settle down. I set my alarm earlier and earlier, thinking maybe that will help me get ahead, get control. I think something's wrong with me if I do it too much. When I was first diagnosed with Crohn's disease, and my body was a mess (and anemic), I would come home from work and take naps. I remember having anxiety dreams that I was sleeping my life away, afraid I would always be that tired. In fact, my anxiety dreams are often about being tired, being sluggish, not being able to wake up fully.

After I had knee surgery, and was so very tired, my friend reminded me that the body heals itself in sleep. I was still young then, not yet a prisoner to being tired. (That was 26, and that same friend told me that it all started to change at 27, and she was right!). I try to remember this now, that my body (and mind and spirit) must need those hours of being covered by that heavy blanket of darkness. I think of Adam, whom God put to sleep so that He could take something out of him. The result was Eve. And so I wonder about what God's  up to when I'm asleep.

The sleep is working, I think, because the past two days I've been alert and ready. I feel that spark when ideas come and I'm excited to write about them, when I read and think, how did they know that put those words, that idea next? When Adam woke up, he recognized the beauty and relevance and for-him-ness (what's a word for that?) of Eve. Sleep is so wonderful for many reasons, but maybe mostly because the waking up is like that.  

watch the light come

I, at first, thought I didn’t have a [writing] ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. ... For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.

 - Toni Morrison

I'm not going so far to say that Toni Morrison and I are kindred spirits, but we do have the morning coffee/watching the light come thing in common. I like this idea of transition and how she uses it to prepare herself to start writing. With so many mental (and spiritual?) blocks that keep us from doing what we really want to do, a slow, gentle rising - the way the sun does it - sounds just right.

For more gleaming gems of her wisdom, read her interview with Paris Review.

neglect

This writing class is requiring a lot of time. Some things that are being neglected as a result:

Dry cleaning piled on my floor
Dust on my dresser and nightstand
The pile of stuff on my desk to sort through
Books under my nightstand waiting to be read
Clean laundry, unfolded in a washbasket
Some friendships, including my housemates (sorry, if you are one of these!)
Magazine I subscribe to
A few extra miles I'd like to run each week
A few extra minutes I'd like to sleep each night
TV shows I'd like to be watching on netflix

For the most part, it's been worth it...

on editing: what is this piece about?

In my day-job as a science/fundraising writer, my favorite part is editing. I didn’t expect this, since I really didn’t know how to do it well before I started. My boss is a terrific editor with a keen eye, and smart as a whip. She asks me questions, states facts (even if they hurt) and tells me what’s missing. When we look at my projects together, I end up feeling a little stupid (why didn’t I see that?) and also schooled, but in a good way. When I finish the revisions, my projects read so much stronger. It’s incredibly satisfying, if also humbling.

I try my hand at editing, too, and am steadily getting better at it. It’s a skill that can be learned by asking simple questions of the piece (mostly, what is the writer trying to say? Does the piece accomplish that? And does each part, as well as the tone, work for it?). Basically, question everything.

Essentially, editing is shaping a piece with a certain goal in mind. I’ve been musing on this idea because in my writing class, I’ve been — almost subconsciously — editing my pieces to fit a certain expectation. Now I’m not talking about the same helpful, strengthening editing my boss has taught me. This kind weakens writing, waters it down like a weak cup of coffee that practically puts you to sleep. It fails on all accounts.

When I was just starting the class, I wrote that I wanted to be daring in my writing. The piece I referenced written by a Mormon woman has stayed with me because she wrote so fearlessly about her faith and how it’s impacted her decisions. Sometimes I hesitate to say that I’m a Christian, or to share that part of my life, in writing to a broader audience because I’m afraid that readers will see that one word as bigger and more important than all the other ones I’m writing, the ones that make up the real story. And yet, in a way, it is bigger, because my love for God, and His for me, really does determine all of my choices. I know a weakness of mine is that my stories lack emotion. While there are probably a few reasons for this, I know that one is because I shy away from exposing my true motivations, feelings, and experiences because I fear being misunderstood. The alternative, however, is being unread, which isn’t very exciting at all.

So back to the questions that editors ask: What is the writer trying to say? Or you could also ask, what is this piece about? People who stand out in their vocation do so because they put themselves into it. They allow who they are to influence the way they wait tables, make art, manage employees, mother children, assist an executive, teach children — and write. I suppose that anybody, then, could ask these questions of themselves as a practice in editing. Take out what’s not important, add what is, make everything work toward what you’re trying to accomplish.

such fullness

Once each week, I make dinner for my housemates. The thing I’m not sure my housemates know is that this commitment is just as much for me as it is for them. It’s a weekly meditation, a ritual that reminds me that with raw, unformed ingredients and an hour of concentration (ok, and maybe a recipe and a little bit of know-how), a table can be prepared. 

Planning ahead is key. If I feel rushed or harried, the whole process loses its meditative quality. These dinners usually happen on Wednesdays, so by Tuesday night, I’ve chosen the recipes (it almost always involves a new recipe these days) and purchased the ingredients. That means when I get home from work, I go into my zone.

You know what I mean by my zone, right? It’s when I’m completely focused and involved. It’s a rare experience to be completely absorbed in a task, but somehow cooking takes me there. Even if one of my housemates is in the kitchen with me, I rarely talk, and I try not to feel guilty about this. If they ask me if I need help, I almost always refuse, because cooking this way is a solo dance for me. It’s not that I don’t enjoy cooking with other people, but I need to be able to be conscious of what I’m doing, and being present to people often distracts me. Preparing a meal is a full sensory experience — I get to smell, listen, touch, taste, and see. (I once read that the best utensils are our bare hands. I need to try this more!) Inevitably I cut myself or spill something every time, but getting messy is part of the process; I’m slowly coming to terms with that fact. Oil sizzles, sauces bubble, dishes bang around the sink, slowly filling it up — my guilty pleasure is cooking like they do on food shows, preparing each ingredient and laying them out in their own bowls or plates so that they’re ready when you need them. Buzzers beep. 

And then it’s time. 

Each dish is brought to the table, water is poured, and if we’re lucky or feeling generous, we get the wine glasses out, too. I sit down, usually exhausted but also satisfied (even before we eat), and let myself breathe and talk and look at the people around me. We pray, we serve, we taste, then sit back, grateful to be given such fullness in our lives.

Tonight I’m making this Thai dish along with some eggplant. My favorite meal in the past few months was these Mediterranean lamb meatballs. What are you making these days? And what gets you into your zone?

nature reveals her secrets

All labor, bodily or mental, needs time and effort. We must give ourselves up to it. Nature reveals her secrets and yields her treasures only to diligent and thoughtful labor.

-Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer

it's where i live

“It’s where I live. I mean, I’m not someone who flies into a place and then leaves it again. I actually live in these areas… And so it’s a different kind of experience.” - Lourdes Garcia Navarro, NPR reporter

Growing up, I attended a Mennonite church in a rural area outside of Philadelphia. Every Palm Sunday and summer, a group of children and a few adults from a Mennonite church in the city would visit us. This group of mostly African American kids was accompanied by Ms. Darlene, the children’s minister at that church. Ms. Darlene was a short, white woman who always dressed in a long, modest skirt, a loose blouse, and white tennis shoes. Her hair was pinned up in the same loose bun with messy tendrils hanging down — a suggestion of her simplicity, not stylishness. She had a strong voice with which she made Bible stories jump off felt boards and into real life, and her singing was loud and sure. The church was located in a poor, mostly minority neighborhood, and that’s where she made her home even though it was dangerous, especially for someone who stuck out like she did. She once told a story about being attacked by men who attempted to rape her. When she prayed, they stopped.

Ms. Darlene was my unnamed inspiration, I think, when at the end of high school I decided I would be a social worker. My college application process was shaped by the goal: I applied to colleges only in Pennsylvania so that I could practice social work and possibly get a Master’s Degree under the state’s accreditation. And I wanted no debt — social workers don’t make much money — so I chose a public university. Throughout my studies, I imagined myself a scruffy, white single woman (because that’s who social workers are, right?) living in the inner city, seeing lives transformed, though by what, I’m not sure I knew at the time.

After college, I began seeing how difficult social work was for me. Being with people required a lot of energy, and even more so when those people are messy and needy. I was often overwhelmed by situations I encountered and felt helpless and angry most of the time, though I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) have articulated that then. And I need concrete signs of progress or completion to feel accomplished, which come infrequently when working with people.

What’s more, other, more pressing dreams were rising to the surface, and the life I’d assumed I’d live as a social worker wasn’t matching up to these. I wanted to be married, that’s for sure, and the messy bun and sneakers with a skirt aren’t exactly my style. And then there was writing, which I liked to enjoy from a distance but was too afraid to think I could do it, too.

And even if I could write, what about racial reconciliation and being cross-cultural and God’s love for the poor — all the values I’d spent my college and post-college years championing and (gasp) basing my relationship with God on? Who was I without these things? I couldn't imagine how writing could give them as central a place as I'd been taught to believe they should have.

Thankfully, I am on my way to understanding that being a social worker isn’t the only way to love God or help people. The decision to write has been largely based on gut instinct, following joy, and asking God about my desires. Giving myself to it, I’ve found a path waiting for me where, along the way, I am being offered things I’d given up, like a way to help people, extend relationship and explore the meaning of their experiences.

Many journalists and writers have chosen the profession because they feel compelled to find meaning and dignity in human experiences. This compulsion leads to where few others are going. And it leads to connections with people whose voices we need to hear.

If you’re still with me, here’s where the real treat comes in. On my drive to work I listened to this short interview with a journalist who covers news in the Middle East. It’s a short interview, so I encourage you to give a listen. I love her approach to journalism (as well as her obvious passion for it). My favorite parts are where she talks about going where others aren't going because that's where the story is, and about making her home where she is reporting. To me, her choice is an expression of her deep value for relationships with people and for giving words to their stories.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the interview, calling, or any other ideas this brings to you.